There was no engine.
Maybe he was turned around. He looked the other way. There were three cars. No engine there either. He must be on some kind of siding. . . .
Brett stepped back inside, and pushed through into the next car. It was empty. He walked along the length of it, into the next car. It was empty too. He went back through the two cars and his own car and on, all the way to the end of the train. All the cars were empty. He stood on the platform at the end of the last car, and looked back along the rails. They ran straight through the dry fields, right to the horizon. He stepped down to the ground, went along the cindery bed to the front of the train, stepping on the ends of the wooden ties. The coupling stood open. The tall, dusty coach stood silently on its iron wheels, waiting. Ahead the tracks went on—
And stopped.
2
Maybe all train trips were like this, Brett thought. After all, this was his first. If he’d been asleep, say, he’d never have noticed the train stopping and all the rest of it. Probably his best bet was to get back aboard and wait. Yet he didn’t. He started walking.
He walked along the ties, following the iron rails, shiny on top, and brown with rust on the sides. A hundred feet from the train they ended. The cinders went on another ten feet and petered out. Beyond, the fields closed in. Brett looked up at the sun. It was lower now in the west, its light getting yellow and late-afternoonish. He turned and looked back at the train. The cars stood high and prim, empty, silent. Then he thought of his suitcase, still in the rack, and his new jacket on the seat. He walked back, climbed in, got his bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped down to the cinders, followed them to where they ended. He hesitated a moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the field he could see what looked like a smudge on the far horizon.
He walked until dark, then made himself a scratchy nest in the dead stalks and went to sleep.
* * *
He slept for what seemed like a long time; then he woke, lay on his back, looking up at pink dawn clouds. Around him, dry stalks rustled in a faint stir of air. He felt crumbly earth under his fingers. He sat up, reached out and broke off a stalk. It crumbled into fragile chips. He wondered what it was. It wasn’t any crop he’d ever seen before.
He stood, looked around. The field went on and on, dead flat. A locust came whirring toward him, plumped to earth at his feet. He picked it up. Long, elbowed legs groped at his fingers aimlessly. He tossed the insect in the air. It fluttered away. To the east the smudge was clearer now; it seemed to be a grey wall, far away. The city? He picked up his bag and started on.
He was getting hungry. He hadn’t eaten since the previous morning. He was thirsty too. The city couldn’t be more than three hours’ walk. He tramped along, the dry plants crackling under his feet, little puffs of dust rising from the dry ground. He thought about the rails, running across the empty fields, ending . . .
He tried to remember just when the strangeness had begun: he had heard the locomotive groaning up ahead as the train slowed. And there had been feet in the corridor. Where had they gone?
He thought of the train, Casperton, Aunt Haicey, Mr. Phillips. They seemed very far away, something remembered from long ago. Up above the sun was hot. That was real. The other things, from the past, seemed unimportant. Ahead there was a city. He would walk until he came to it. He tried to think of other things: television, crowds of people, money; the tattered paper and worn silver—
Only the sun and the dusty plain and the dead plants were real now. He could see them, feel them. And the suitcase. It was heavy; he shifted hands, kept going.
There was something white on the ground ahead, a small shiny surface protruding from the earth. Brett put the suitcase down, went down on one knee, dug into the dry soil, and pulled out a china teacup, the handle missing. Caked dirt crumbled away under his thumb, leaving the surface clean. He looked at the bottom of the cup. It was unmarked. Why just one teacup, he wondered, here in the middle of nowhere? He dropped it, took up his suitcase, and went on.
After that he watched the ground more closely. He found a shoe; it was badly weathered, but the sole was good. It was a high-topped work shoe, size 10½C. Who had dropped it here? He thought of other lone shoes he had seen, lying at the roadside or in alleys. How did they get there . . . ?
Half an hour later he detoured around a rusted front fender from an old-fashioned car. He looked around for the rest of the car but saw nothing. The wall was closer now; perhaps two miles more.
A scrap of white paper fluttered across the field in a stir of air. He saw another, more, blowing along in the fitful gusts. He ran a few steps, caught one, smoothed it out.
BUY NOW—PAY LATER!
He picked up another.
PREPARE TO MEET GOD
A third said:
WIN WITH WILKIE
3
He plodded on, his eyes on the indifferent wall ahead as it came closer. At last he reached it. Nothing changed. He was still tired and hungry. Now the wall loomed above him, smooth and grey. He was uncomfortably aware of the dust caked on his skin and clothes. He decided to follow the wall, maybe find a gate. As he walked he brushed at himself absently. Aunt Haicey would scold him if she knew how dirty he had gotten his new clothes. Swell impression he’d make! The suitcase dragged at his arm, thumped against his shin. He was very hungry and thirsty. He sniffed the air, instinctively searching for the odors of food. He had been following the wall for a long time, searching for an opening. It curved away from him, rising vertically from the level earth. Its surface was porous, unadorned, too smooth to climb. It was, Brett estimated, twenty feet high. If there were anything to make a ladder from—
Ahead he saw a wide gate, flanked by grey columns. He came up to it, put the suitcase down, and wiped at his forehead with his handkerchief. It came away muddy. Through the opening in the wall a brick-paved street was visible, and the facades of buildings. Those on the street before him were low, not more than one or two stories, but behind them taller towers reared up. There were no people in sight; no sounds stirred the hot late-afternoon air. Brett picked up his bag and passed through the gate.
4
For the next hour he walked empty pavements, listening to the echoes of his footsteps against brownstone fronts, empty shop windows, curtained glass doors, and here and there a vacant lot, weed-grown and desolate. He paused at cross streets, looked down long vacant ways. Now and then a distant sound came to him: the lonely honk of a horn, a faintly tolling bell, a clatter of hooves. He didn’t think they had horses any more in cities.
He came to a narrow alley that cut like a dark canyon between blank walls. He stood at its mouth, listening to a distant murmur, like a crowd at a funeral. He turned down the narrow way.
It went straight for a few yards, then twisted. As he followed its turnings the crowd noise gradually grew louder. He could make out individual voices now, an occasional word above the hubbub. He started to hurry, eager to find someone to talk to.
Abruptly the voices—hundreds of voices, he thought—rose in a roar, a long-drawn Yaaayyyyy . . . ! Brett thought of a stadium crowd as the home team trotted onto the field. He could hear a band now, a shrilling of brass, the clatter and thump of percussion instruments. Now he could see the mouth of the alley ahead, a sunny street hung with bunting, the backs of people, and over their heads the rhythmic bobbing of a passing procession, tall shakos and guidons in almost even rows. Two tall poles with a streamer between them swung into view. He caught a glimpse of tall red letters:
. . . FOR OUR SIDE!
He moved closer, edged up behind the grey-backed crowd. A phalanx of yellow-tunicked men approached, walking stiffly, fez tassels swinging. A small boy darted out into the street, loped along at their side. The music screeched and wheezed. Brett tapped the man before him.